Ashley Maxwell-Lam, a project manager for a major bank in Sydney, Australia, has been wearing six-inch stilettos to work for about a year and claims they make him feel empowered.

30-year-old Ashley has always loved women in high-heels and the power they exude, so he decided to adopt the same footwear in order to feel empowered as well.

The trick worked, and now he wears one of his nine pairs of six-inch stilettos to his financial services job in Sydney’s CBD several times a week, especially when meeting with new clients.

Dapper

The idea of wearing women’s high-heel shoes to work came about last year, right after Ashley moved from Queensland to Sydney.

One day, he watched a video of Yanis Marshall, Arnaud and Mehdi, a French trio of male dancers in high heels, on TV, and it got him thinking. Then there was this female executive at his bank who seemed to tower over every room she walked in, and who claimed it was all in the shoes.

Powerful

“I asked her how could an object make you feel powerful? So she said, ‘try them on and see’,” Maxwell-Lam told News.com.au. “I did and exactly what she said rang true. I’ve never felt more empowered then putting on a pair of stilettos and walking through a marble lobby.”

So Ashley, who is openly gay, has been wearing high-heels to work ever since. He doesn’t wear them day in, day out, as he admits they can get quite uncomfortable after a while, but he’ll always put them on when meeting with new clients.

His manager didn’t really know what to say when the 30-year-old told her that he planned on wearing high-heels to work, but he let her know that he was very serious about it.